Noxy here! I don't write many blog posts, but I was linked here by a friend, and I fell in love with the idea.

I'm standing here in Booty Bay, surrounded by lots and lots of little pink gnomes all gathered for the same cause: to support the fight against Breast Cancer.

SeeD is an Alliance side guild on Scarlet Crusade-US, and last year they decided to turn their tabards pink, and post around on the forums letting people know and encouraging them to remind the ladies in their lives to speak to their doctors, and to show how much they care. This year they have organised a fun-run--for each pink gnome that shows, SeeD members have pledged to donate various amounts of money to the Susan G Komen Foundation.

At the peak they reached a total of 160 gnomes, with an estimated $200+ raised. (and thats just the guilds officers! the final total is still yet to be tallied!)

In a statement released today, Blizzard says that they have decided against using RealID to identify forum users on the official forums. Blizzard originally stated that they were moving to a forum system where everyone was identified by their real names. Citing user feedback, they've decided that it was not in the best interests of the community to move forward with that plan.

The statement (seen below) was written by Blizzard's CEO, by Mike Morhaime. It was posted on the forum by Nethaera.

Hello everyone,

I'd like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We've been constantly monitoring the feedback you've given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we've decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as conversation threading, the ability to rate posts up or down, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it's clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you'll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard's success from the beginning.

With all this commotion about possibly the most wonderful thing to ever happen to this game (in my opinion), I thought its a good time as any to make a comic about how ridiculous I find all the flame and troll wars.

I have been waiting for a flying pony mount for such a long time, and now not only does my main character get to have one, but ALL OF MY TOONS! And all levels of riding skill! Happiest day of my life. Kinda. ... I really like ponies. And sparkly things.

Mmmm. Sparklies.

Edit: I threw together some wallpaper versions of the comic for you guys. :3

Happy Midsummer Fire Festival, everyone! Uh, nevermind. I'm a bit late for that now. Oh well! Its done at least.

Here's a Festival comic written by our lovely Miyari. She raised the technicalities relating to the quests to stealtheflames of the other factions main cities. So you've taken a flame, great! How? On a stick? And even then, where do you keep it, to stop it going out on your rush back to hand it into the NPC?

How about in your pocket? Well, that wouldn't be very safe now, would it? Your clothes would catch on fire..

Apologies again for the lack of comics lately, I've been incredibly busy, and I still don't have a full time comic writer!

Reminder: If you have any short WoW related comic scripts, or any comic ideas, please dont be afraid to mail them to me via feedback@wowhead.com, I do read them all, even if I dont have the time to draw them all!

This weeks comic was written by Oneric! And features his pretty little priest and our own Malgayne. (The very feminine but MALE blood elf.)

Keep the comic scripts coming guys! I'm still sifting through the emails but the ones I've received so far are pretty promising and I'll try to draw up those that really jump out at me with awesomeness.

As you may have noticed, I've been slacking with the comics. There are a couple reasons behind this, but its mainly due to me being eye-bleedingly busy. I've been using the days I allocate each week for Wowhead, to work on Blizzcon badge images for the wonderful Wowhead Staff.

I will be drawing these for other staff members in the near future, and for those that want to commission me for similar badge-art as above, they will be available soon. I'll add some information about it in a future post.

The other reason for a decrease in comic numbers, is a lack of scripts. I no longer have a full-time writer to make them for me, and I'm having terrible writer's block!

So if any of you out there have any ideas for short, simple, and funny WoW-related comic script, please feel free to send an email to feedback@wowhead.com. Who knows...it might get used!

Blizzard have just announced that the tickets for this years BlizzCon Gaming Convention will be going on sale May 16th, and again May 30th!

The tickets will cost $125 USD, and will be sold in two batches as to give everyone a chance at nabbing their pass to this awesome (IRL*) event. This fourth BlizzCon will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California, on August 21st and 22nd. Like last year, DIRECTV® will be offering the chance to watch the goings on of the convention with their Pay Per View service. Just in case you are unfortunate, and cannot attend BlizzCon in person. Like me. /cry

I know this was supposed to be posted yesterday, but hey, we all have bad days.

Ah, Children's Week. Mr. Wiggles is finally mine. Apart from the amazingly adorable chubby little piggy, my favourite part of this event is the Bad Example achievement. It's not difficult, doesn't have a story behind it, no special significance, it's just ironically mean. And that amuses me. Just one of those fun, selfish and silly achievements.

And so this week's comic has no joke, no punchline, etc. Just lots and lots of delicious and moist cake.

This week's script was written by and stars Koren (the BE priest lady). She's been hunting that darn Time-Lost Proto Drake for gosh knows how long, (so have I /sadface) and is frustrated how quickly it is snapped up by other people in the hunt for it. So, good luck to her, and I hope she bags herself this prize mount soon. <3 (and me too)

Note: Please, for the sake of her sanity and mine, pretty please don't reply to this blog post saying, OH I HAVE ONE, I FOUND IT SO-SO EASILY, etc etc. Or blood vessels will burst. And she might stab me in the head with a pen. And, uh, ignore the fact she can't actually use a crossbow ingame, for comic purposes it's nifty and cute.